One of the perks of having many goal-centric friends and colleagues is the undeniable sense of accountability and motivation that seems to permeate a lot of the content, media, and relationships that make up my day. It often takes removing myself from my usual relationships and routine to see that goal-focused thinking, declaring yearly words, and even PowerSheets are not the everyday norm for many! That being said, if you like living a life that matters most to you and feel like this is GOOD work, find and make friends who share similar thoughts!

On the topic of 2020 goals, I’m looking forward to sharing mine with you today! In past years I’ve shared my yearly goals ON January 1st, thanks to my prep work that took place throughout the prior December. After a whirlwind December though, and trying to live a slower pace throughout January (plus the new blog design I was waiting for which is FINALLY live today!), I decided to embrace things and seize the ‘there’s nothing magical about January 1st’ mentality a la Lara. In turn, I gave myself the permission to plan my goals on my own schedule, resulting in goals that might just be my favorite in recent memory.

But first! A vision board to guide my year of DELIGHT. I feel such calm when I look at it!

And before I jump into my overarching goals, a note on my approach this year.

I have decided to set four over-arching goals with smaller goals beneath each, set per quarter. My hope is that this will allow me a more practical way to accomplish what I want, without getting ahead of myself or feeling defeated too easily. I’ve been inspired by the research that backs up a 12-week goal setting approach over yearly goal setting and am eager to try it out myself.

Here are my 2020 goals along with first quarter small goals and action steps!

ONE. Become a Family Who Loves Nature & Adventure

When working through my PowerSheets, a common theme was the freedom that comes with the elimination of stuff and instead, a greater delight with what’s in front of me. Also, after becoming close with my Aunt over the last two years and realizing how connected her happiness and her proximity to nature is, I started to think maybe the best things in front of me are those actually found in nature; the different sensory experiences of weather, the sounds you experience beside a creek versus those on a hiking trail, the curiosities and delights of fallen maple leaves or fuzzy green caterpillars inching across the cracked sidewalk. These are the things I want my boys to delight in and have filling their days. They are things I too, want to savor in.

Then after digging deeper, and uncovering how a big part of my mental and emotional wellness stems from the very varied weather patterns in the Midwest, I wanted to give less power to something so greatly out of my control. Even better, if adventure and time with nature can inspire my kids to be less-hurried, more curious, delighted, patient, inspired, and even introspective as little humans, perhaps I too, can have the same experience. As such, this goal quickly went from converting our boys into nature lovers to infusing more outdoor adventure and delight into our entire family.

Small first quarter action steps and mini goals: Tackle the big garage clean up (our last big home area needing an overhaul) and make it a space to inspire adventure and easily access weather-appropriate gear, select outdoor-parenting type books to order for March reading, walk to pick up the boys from school as much as possible and instead of going straight home, take a walk around the block in the wagon, invest in weather appropriate gear for both boys, strategize spring activities for the boys by looking at various programs, costs, and inclusions (e.g. renewing our FMG pass, enrolling in Tinkergarten).

TWO. Fill Our Home With Delight

We’ve spent a great deal of time over the last couple years investing into the process of moving (e.g. keeping our eyes on any potential listing that popped up) and / or building our forever home (disclosure: we had a lot, customized floorplan and even some selected finishes, our current home photographed for a listing, etc;) In October I even took the boys to watch the excavator digging our selected lot for septic testing. When things fell through shortly after and our home dreams were put on the very back burner, I was devastated but not long before realizing our current home, IS already one full of delight, and a space that can be further added to in many tangible and non-tangible ways. Ultimately, I want our space to feel welcoming, special, comfortable, harmonious, and lived-in, NOW within our means, and not in the future only when the stars align perfectly. And if I am honest, I also want a home interior that mirrors those found in Seaside, Florida where we most feel at peace and relaxed.

This goal breaks down into two facets: as mentioned above, a tangible category and a non-tangible category.

Small first quarter action steps and mini goals (tangible): finish updating the foyer off the garage with new tile and grout, add a roman shade to powder room once it’s been newly painted, replace cracked sink and broken faucet, invest in a new family command center board (perhaps one of these?) and rearrange the coat closet so it works well with outdoor activity time.

Small first quarter action steps and mini goals (non tangible): continue to keep our phones downstairs once we retire upstairs for the evening so our focus is 100% on bedtime joys (which are sometimes the opposite of joyful haha!), slowly infuse more Lifegiving Home practices back into our schedule now that we have a good rhythm with two children (this includes lit candles during dinner, home-cooked meals, sitting at the dining room table to eat, saying grace before each meal, peaceful music playing in lieu of the blaring television).

THREE. Redesign My Schedule, and With It, How I Spend My Time

The last year and especially this past holiday season were excellent reminders of how careful I need to be with my time if how I spend it is important (which it is). Our unique circumstances taught me how even our greatest plans can be thwarted by unforeseen circumstances, and much like a monetary emergency fund, margin and white space are valuable safety nets when life gets bumpy and full. Finally, I also have learned greatly in my pursuit of balancing motherhood with creative pursuits, that it’s exceptionally easy to overcommit myself, and sometimes for the benefit of things that don’t feel Godly or worthy.

As such, this goal feels exceptionally important and the one of my four that will take the most discipline and creativity. Yet, the benefit in reaching this goal helps give me the space to make the other goals more likely to come to fruition. I’ve already been trying some new things in my daily schedule thus far into 2020 and hope my quarterly goal setting approach will allow me to make strategic progress over the next 12 months should I need to reevaluate or change my approach.

Small first quarter action steps and mini goals: recalibrate my sleeping habits starting with a 10:00 pm bedtime and 11:00 pm lights out policy with little to no exceptions, set our Alexa alarm to a time that’s well before the boys’ wake up window so I can be focused in the morning and present for my family, despite any temptation to do otherwise, keep a firm lock on my schedule until the end of June to ensure I am not overcommitting myself, strategize a realistic plan for RB Soap Co moving ahead into third and fourth quarter so that I can take the boys out of their childcare for the summer.

FOUR: Become a Fiercer Version of Myself

So this goal feels the most arbitrary and least specific of them all, and perhaps it made you laugh, but it’s the one that feels the most thrilling because of the possibilities I’ve been dreaming up! Coming off my bold decision made in 2019 and announced here, I’m invigorated by the idea of doing new things and changing course when life demands it. And in transparency, I was recently watching old videos of myself and one of them was me doing a sitting press to handstand a year after Lachlan was born. I was amazed and even a bit impressed that just a year after an emergency c-section delivery and nursing a baby, I was strong enough to do such a tricky skill. While I am not currently strong enough to get off the ground from a straddle, I WANT to be strong enough again and hope my acquired strength will extend far beyond a singular skill.

It’s also worth noting that fierceness for me in 2020 hopefully isn’t limited to physical capacities. There are a few non-physical areas I want to grow in like improving my speaking confidence so I can delivery a keynote talk in June with confidence, but again, my quarterly goal planning approach is allowing me to only look ahead to first quarter.

Small first quarter action steps and mini goals (NOTE: there is a lot of crossover here with mini-goals from my first one about becoming nature and adventure lovers; not by accident either!): skip my morning bath routine and instead get dressed into my workout clothes so I can tackle an at-home exercise class by mid-afternoon, reach 8k steps daily by using my Fitbit to track progress (consider updating my five-year-old Alta), continue supporting a 90/10 lifestyle with no gluten or dairy and limited amounts of sugar, continue biweekly counselling sessions to maintain positive mental health (a switch I made from weekly sessions to steward my time better), invest in a stretching regimen, start mapping out my June keynote presentation points on poster board, get a fresh hair cut and color.

And there you have it! My first quarter goal ideas and what I am focusing my time on through to March aside from some business goals and responsibilities like an exciting event we have in NOLA next month. I hope you enjoyed reading about them and look forward to my update in April when I share second quarter intentions!

Somewhat unrelated, I also want to share a public note of gratitude for Payge and her team at Blooming Pixel Creatives for their endless work on my new blog design. The blog design was the final piece of the puzzle in my business transition over the last few months, and it feels delightful for it all to be done and for my many websites (RBC site, soap shop, and the blog all done by BPC) to all be consistent with one another. I highly recommend Payge and her talented team for any web, design, coding, or SEO!

Have a great week, friends! Xo

Vision board credits: Reading / Porch / Kiddo / Plates / Hands / Croissants / Bridge / Charleston / Kitchen